Monday 22 May 2017

End game of the election....

Not long to go now in the UK General Election.


Half-term next week so in real terms this is the pen-ultimate week of campaigning in main, so the last few key points will be focused upon.


Labour have had a stroke of luck, now being able to go on and on about Tories murdering old people and grabbing inheritance (which is surely a Labour policy, but, hey-ho). This will get tedious.


Now the tough stuff is out of the way for the Tories, they can get back to reminding everyone that about Jezbollah and McIRA are not, er, patriots (well, not for this country anyway).


And then Brexit. Which has been forgotten for a bit, that can come back now.


The Lib Dems will play into that too and UKIP so it should be a free run to get that back as the Focus.


So that is the attack lines and newspapers written for the next 2 weeks.


My only thought, is surely for Labour, they must discover that Dianne Abbott's long-lost auntie is sick in the Caribbean and she must be called away for a family emergency until around June 9th?

44 comments:

Anonymous said...

That Tory policy is a stinker, though, an absolute stinker - and from the party who effectively doubled inheritance tax allowances only a few years back. I'd rather put 10p on income tax (and I earn above average) - although with 9% on student loans that would mean a 39% tax rate for any graduate on more than £21,000.

I can only presume that the books look very, very bad, if they feel the need to put such a turd in the manifesto. I can almost feel enthusiasm dropping among the boomer generation.

Anonymous said...

I'm getting Cameron deja vu all over again, circa 2010. What on earth do these policy spuds do in their spare time if it's not floating ideas, taking erudite testimonials, ring the Assoc Chairman, do some sodding research and then focus group it? You can't just dream up policy then run it by the gafferette and then announce it - it's bloody amateurish codswallop.

Good decision to yield straight away but it highlights her office's control freakery - heaven forfend that they may consult a guy who knows his onions.

DtP

CityUnslicker said...

U-turn is for the best, get thisout the way then back to Brexit and Corbyn.

The thing is, the press love it as it is creating news - their thing. The last thing the Country actually needs is a close election with a loony left alternative waiting in the wings if the EU plays its hardest on Brexit!

Charlie Suet said...

Opinionated wonks attach themselves to potential prime ministers, giving them the support they crave in the hope that one day it'll help them get the policy they've "fought for their entire political life".

This policy will almost always be nonsense - if a government action is the solution to anything then it's already being done.

I'm getting seriously concerned about how few people seem to care about Corbyn being an IRA supporter - that gap is much, much narrower than it should be. I hope the U-turn sorts things out a bit.

I shan't be unhappy to see this election over at all.

Anonymous said...

+1

It would be unbelievable for an incumbent who had the choice of timing (FTP aside); who had the biggest funding; the toughest strategist in Crosby; and who had just won a mid term by-election (something that doesn't happen) to lose... but then again this is May.

Short of talent, untrustworthy of people with skills (Hammond), and a control freak to boot.

Just get the election over with and deal with May later. She needs to go.

dearieme said...

" and from the party who effectively doubled inheritance tax allowances only a few years back"

If you mean the transferable NRB: no it was Brown.,

DJK said...

Someone has to care for the oldies. If their relatives are unable or unwilling then someone else has to pay for strangers to do the caring. In the absence of a magic money tree, it seems to me fairer to raid the old folks' assets after death than to tax young people so those assets can be passed unencumbered to the oldies' lucky children.

Surely grown-up government is about making hard choices, rather than endlessly kicking cans down the road or borrowing money from future generations?

Malcolm Stevas said...

Why must Abbott return as early as 9th June? How many would not be grateful for a far more prolonged absence - say, a permanent one?

Anonymous said...

DJK - the magic money tree produced a £375 billion windfall to save the UK banks.

Anonymous said...

"DJK - the magic money tree produced a £375 billion windfall to save the UK banks. "

No they didn't. You don't understand QE and thus you look stupid and small minded.


Someone has to care for the oldies.

I agree, but this is another policy where behave sensibly and accumulate some wealth, you get punished, behave recklessly get everything for free. It sucks.

Anonymous said...

The best way to reduce care costs is to find a cure for dementia.

andrew said...

Re an earlier post
'can jc win'
Jes he can

Mostly by virtue of May's dismal performance

Electorates rightly find those who say one thing (strong and stable) but do another (flip flop) rather unpopular.

That lovely central campaign message is toast and I expect to hear John mcdonnell using it against May almost daily.

Anonymous said...

"You don't understand QE"

BoE creating cash to keep asset prices up? I'm sure it didn't come from taxation, and I'm pretty sure it didn't come from selling gilts.

Please explain, always happy to learn.

Anonymous said...

"behave sensibly and accumulate some wealth, you get punished, behave recklessly get everything for free"

We must be fair. That's been the policy of both main parties since 1945. It's just that it seems more hypocritical when Tories do it.

But I wouldn't say that today's youth (or even 30-somethings and beyond), with a 20-year real wage decline, are "behaving recklessly" by not buying a house or accumulating savings. They have never had the chance to accumulate any wealth, and half of them are burdened with student debt.

If you wanted to demographically damage the natives without using force, you couldn't design a more successful policy than those of the last 20 years.

Anonymous said...

behave sensibly and accumulate some wealth, you get punished, behave recklessly get everything for free

How do you accumulative wealth by not growing, building or making it. Just sitting in a place does not accumulate wealth. If that were the case, all our unemployed would be millionaires.

Time to strip out the bubble economy and get back to real capitalism

dustybloke said...

Good luck trying to find someone who will admit to being Abbott's auntie.

DJK said...

Anon 2:44:
>Someone has to care for the oldies.

>I agree, but this is another policy where behave sensibly and accumulate some wealth, you get punished, behave recklessly get everything for free. It sucks.

All true, but there are no good options here and the policy will look grossly unfair to whoever has to pay.

formertory said...

@Anonymous 3.26

BoE creating cash to keep asset prices up?

The other Anonymous might say "QED" at this point.

Not cash. Money - it's (oftentimes) different. The money created didn't enter the economy as cash; it was just an accounting entry to bolster the liquidity of banks so they could lend without breaching their legal obligations on asset ratios. Nothing physical - no banknotes, no spendable money at all. Nothing you could boot out of a helicopter. Richard Murphy is confused on the same point.

DJK said...

I should add that buying a house in the 1970s and then finding forty years later that you have an asset worth over £1M is not big or clever. It hardly counts as accumulating wealth through some sort of heroic self-sacrifice.

Anonymous said...

formertory - I thought the money (is that OK?) was used to buy assets from the banks (including gilts) thus bolstering the price of said assets and driving down gilt yields.

"just an accounting entry to bolster the liquidity of banks so they could lend without breaching their legal obligations on asset ratios"

So the banks were effectively insolvent? Is that "accounting entry" likely to reversed any decade soon? Accounting entries created to make the figures better usually attract fines and censure, not praise ("you've not understood the function of a central bank, It's what they do").

"so they could lend without breaching their legal obligations"

But immediately after 2008 no one wanted to borrow. It seems that only after the Bank made it plain that it would 'print' a l'outrance did everyone start borrowing again, and we are back (metaphorically) in 2006 only with even more debt.

Anonymous said...

@Anon 5.41

You can make a fortune sitting on your arse. I've been paying over above my mortgage for about the last 15 years and I was gonna keep paying it until I owned the thing just like normal people do.

Then QE kicked in, interest rates plummeted, banks screamed out for 70% loan to value people just to bolster and sense of normality and it turned out that my house was worth a frikkin' fortune.

Ceteris paribus - I have obtained wealth just by sitting in a place and I quit my job last year and have no intention of getting another one soon. This is the richest i've ever been and I had absolutely no part in it whatsoever.

DtP

E-K said...

E-K Snr is gone.

It will take some getting used to. A huge void but a great calm also. Like being freed from a dank cave into a lagoon.

dustybloke said...

O/T but this was too good to go unnoticed.

BBC: Why are there so few big gardens at Chelsea Flower Show this year?

COS BREXIT!!!

Timbo614 said...

E-K. My condolences. Do not be ashamed of the slight relief. I went through the same/similar process with my old man, watched disease destroy the strong & confident father I once had. This time will pass and you will remember him as he was before he got old and ill

Sincerely, Timbo

Blue Eyes said...

Sorry for your loss EK. Thoughts are with you and your family.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear that E-K.

Thud said...

EK, for what its worth my thoughts and prayers are with you and your family tonight.

Anonymous said...

You were an awesome son, EK. He was proud. Love to you & yours x

DtP

Bill Quango MP said...

Deepest sympathy EK. Never easy.
At least he had you there.

Charlie said...

"You don't understand QE"

I understand that it caused Brexit and has driven a wedge between the generations.

The standard of public debate in our country is such that a Tory PM has announced a cap that effectively allows the very wealthy to pass on more of their over-inflated property wealth to their kids, while that party of the working classes, Labour, celebrates this as a victory. Elderly care is yet another massive liability, that needed to have its funding sorted out this time ten years ago, hoofed down the road. It's pathetic. And May really does think she's offering Strong and Stable leadership? She's offering nothing of the sort.

My prediction: we are going to get bent over and absoutely f*cked by the EU in the Brexit negotiations. Tens of billions will be frittered away to appease Juncker et al. We might need Jezza's magic money tree at this rate.

Anonymous said...

On News Night - Rachel Sylvester is bang on the money. As a nation, as a constituency 'we are in a better place!'

Many people around this parish have sat through Health & Social Care political committees. For a 36 year old, beardy cunt who has as many qualifications as my fucking gardener to dream up integrating Clinical Commissioning Groups with Local Authorities when it was perfectly fucked with PCTs is cloud cuckoo fucking land.

How dare some lad be so arrogant as to assume that Local Government is a fucking distraction? There has never been democracy in the NHS whereas Local Government has more than enough. This is obviously a sign of Theresa's exclusion. She did order the boy. It explains Liz Truss too. It's these preventable mistakes that are gonna keep happening unless she gets Ken Clarke back or at least someone to shout 'BOLLOX!'

DtP

Anonymous said...

The inner generational contract was broken when young people were routinely saddled with huge student debt, denied the opportunity to get on the housing ladder, have a reasonable pension and receive decent training and development (mass immigration was much cheaper). Brexit is going to cap immigration and will cause significantly more young people to vote. For the elderly and middle aged I suspect that it may well end up being turkeys voting for Christmas.

Nick Drew said...

Timbo said it well - you'll remember him as he was, Kev.

For now, look after Mum.

Nick

E-K said...

Thank you for your kind messages. Obviously Manchester is diverting any self pity in this house. Poor kids and parents.

dearieme said...

Just when May was being increasingly, absurdly, dismally inadequate, along comes an atrocity to remind us that Corvid spent much of his career cheering on terrorist killers. She falls into the category of a lucky general, I suppose.

And by tomorrow at the latest the loons at the Guardian will be howling that the terrorist attack was a false flag operation to help the Tories. Betcha.

CityUnslicker said...

dearime - sad to report twitter was on that after about 5 mins....SNP types the worst!

Anonymous said...

"And by tomorrow at the latest the loons at the Guardian will be howling that the terrorist attack was a false flag operation to help the Tories. Betcha."

Howl they may, but is there any credence to this beleif? The timing seems to good to be true.

Charlie Suet said...

The timing is convenient in the sense that it pushes the 'dementia-tax' stuff off the front page. It also highlights Corbyn's apologies for terrorism, though he's brought that on himself. May getting the chance to look statesman-like is obviously an advantage as well.

In practice it's likely to take some of the steam out of the campaign - at least for the moment. It's difficult to know whether it would get any traction if it hasn't already, but I suspect the Tories must have been preparing to go all out on Corbyn. That will have to be pushed back at least.

So far as conspiracy theories go, the usual counter-argument is that the Tories would have to show an unusual competence (not to say abnormal malevolence) to make it work.

andrew said...


It is a tribute to the 99.9999999% of us (of all faiths and political beliefs and favorite football teams etc) that we are all completely capable of doing things like that
- but do not.

We are just slightly rude to each other.

Blue Eyes said...

Wow there are actually people on here suggesting that the UK government may have orchestrated mass murder of its citizens in order to swing an election.

Anonymous said...

I know the Guardian think of Lynton Crosby the way I think of Peter Mandelson, but I like to think that not even Mandelson would be capable of blowing up small girls* to claw back a few points in the polls.

* in the UK, that is. In Syria, Yemen or Iraq, well...

Anonymous said...

Andrew Pierce in the Mail

"What those wading in did not realise was that the original intention had been to include a ‘cap’ on lifetime care costs – with the state paying for any bills once they hit around £85,000. But this cap was removed by Nick Timothy, the PM’s joint chief of staff, who did his best to convince Mrs May the new policy was fairer. He argued it shifted the balance of public policy away from favouring the old against the young and shared money ‘more fairly’ between rich and poor people. However, every Cabinet minister apart from Mrs May, Mr Hammond and Welfare Secretary Damian Green was kept in the dark – until briefed shortly before the manifesto’s publication last Thursday."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Timothy

Nick doesn't sound like a bad chap, but he's relatively youthful and might not have a gut feel for what that policy would look like to a fifty-something or sixty-something homeowner,, floating in the manifesto punchbowl. Whose brilliant idea was it to hide the manifesto from an entire Cabinet? Can't stand Ken Clarke, but I bet he'd have spotted it.

Suff said...

Sorry for your loss EK
Suff

Anonymous said...

Blue Eyes.

"Wow there are actually people on here suggesting that the UK government may have orchestrated mass murder of its citizens in order to swing an election."

Suggesting, no. Keeping an open mind, yes. These are after all interesting times we are living in. With respect to Orchestrating, I would have thought the modus operandi is more likely to be; intelligence which is, opportunistically, not acted on by the security services. The aim being to bring to the forefront of the electorates mind evidence of an external threat. Providing the opportunity for team blue remind them that team red may not be the best option on security. Tenuous, undoubtedly. Evidence Based, no. Possible, prove it isn't?

Charlie Suet you make some good points, particularly on the competence of the government. I laughed at that.